Campbell Union High School District improves student services and saves millions

The challenge – Meet budgetary constraints, provide leading edge services

“Initially,” said Charles Kanavel, director of technology at Campbell Union, “we weren’t looking to solve a technical problem as much as we were looking to solve a budgetary problem.”  Campbell Union’s strategic plan calls for providing and training students with the best technology possible.  “That requires money,” Kanavel said.  Perhaps the biggest expense was lifecycle refresh.  Campbell Union had a four-year refresh cycle, which meant it had to retire and purchase  approximately 500 machines a year.  “It cost about $1,100 to replace a physical desktop, and that’s a half a million bucks a year [and] in four years, I’ll have the same problem.”  In these difficult budgetary times, this is a large expense for a public school system.

But Campbell Union faced other issues.  Because all applications had to be resident on the desktops, it “meant that as the kids move from classroom to classroom, they don’t have the same application from place to place.  It also meant that kids in a class had access to applications that maybe they shouldn’t have, which creates distractions.”  In addition, having 2,500 individual desktops meant a lot of time spent on maintenance: IT staff traveling to all the desktops to patch and maintain them, which was a logistical and budgetary challenge.

Implementing a Citrix desktop virtualization solution

After examining options, Campbell Union decided upon desktop virtualization through Citrix® XenDesktop™, Platinum Edition.  “I looked at virtualization to see if we could cut those costs and maintenance issues.  We decided upon Citrix because Citrix wins the desktop battle hands down,” Kanavel states.

“On a four-year basis, which if you look at the inventory refresh cycle alone, we’re going to save $1.2 million.” But they are also extending the lifecycle refresh and saving even more.  “I don’t have to go out and buy a bunch of thin client boxes which would add another $400 per desktop in deployment cost.  I can turn anything into a thin client.  So we are going to extend that lifecycle to eight years.  On an eight-year basis, we’re saving $4 million versus what we were doing previously.”  

Campbell Union has also implemented Citrix® Essentials for XenServer™ Platinum Edition as part of the desktop virtualization support structure.  “We are using XenServer for provisioning servers, e-mail support, Active Directory backups and those kinds of things,” Kanavel says. “As time goes on, we’re definitely going to be doing server and resource consolidation on the XenServer platform.

Desktop virtualization provides better user experience and more services

Campbell Union is also able to provide better services through virtualization.

“We are virtualizing the computer labs,” Kanavel says.  “Students can access their programs from home as well as the classroom.  They can go class to class and those profiles follow them.  This will give students the flexibility to continue work on projects at home as opposed to coming in after school and having to wait for a computer to become available.”  

Campbell Union also has implemented hybrid courses, online courses that bring students from multiple sites together under one teacher. “It pushes the boundaries of education,” Kanavel says.  “It’s very expensive for schools to staff one teacher for 30 students who really need a special course, in one school.  So what happens is those students end up taking take a lower level course.” With online hybrid courses, Campbell Union will be able to provide such special classes to all the students who need it, no matter which school they are in.  “Hybrid online classes also push the boundaries of school and class time,” he continues.  “You can have a class on a Saturday or at 7:00 at night.” It also offers an alternative to crowded summer school classes, as students will be able to make up credits after school and on weekends from their homes.

All in all, Campbell Union knows it made the right decision.  “We’re going to save $1.2 million over several years, and at the same time we’re providing better and more extended services to the students. That is an unbeatable argument,” he concludes.